The investigation, published in the Sunday Times, came just days after President Obama claimed that the Pakistan drone campaign was a ‘targeted, focused effort’ that ‘has not caused a huge number of civilian casualties.’

A US counterterrorism official attacked the investigation in a statement given to the New York Times: ‘One must wonder why an effort that has so carefully gone after terrorists who plot to kill civilians has been subjected to so much misinformation,’ the anonymous official said.

‘Let’s be under no illusions — there are a number of elements who would like nothing more than to malign these efforts and help al Qaeda succeed.’

The Atlantic called for the CIA to lift its official policy of refusing to discuss the drone programme in an op-ed titled ‘The C.I.A.’s Silence on Drone Strikes Is Getting Awkward‘, in which it described the Bureau’s findings as ‘horrific’. In a partner piece, the Atlantic noted that the nameless US official did not deny the findings of the investigation, and described the accusation of enabling terrorism as ‘the sort of scurrilous charge that the executive branch typically throws out when it wants to distract everyone from the substance of the matter’.

In an interview with Amy Goodman for Democracy Now!, the Bureau’s chief reporter on drones, Chris Woods, condemned the US government’s response to the investigation as ‘disgraceful’, but observed that there had been no reports of attacks on funerals and mourners since July 2011, when Leon Panetta stepped down as head of the CIA.

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